


Shelter Me

by Viscariafields



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/M, First Kiss, Huddling For Warmth, Only One Bed, Snowed In, smidge of hurt comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-08
Updated: 2020-11-08
Packaged: 2021-03-08 22:09:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,423
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27460234
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Viscariafields/pseuds/Viscariafields
Summary: Usually the first fluffy white snowflakes of the season filled Lace with cheer. Back on the farm, her family had always celebrated the end of the season with hot cider and a fresh baked meat pie and prepared for a long winter together in their cozy home. She tried to keep the tradition up on her own, even when traveling. She’d already traded with the Avvar for some spiced drink that probably wasn’t made of apples but would definitely warm up her toes as the early winter froze the ground beneath her feet.But she wasn’t cheered today. It was late afternoon, the sky was an ominous color, almost all the scouts were back at camp, and their scholar was missing.There would be no hot cider tonight.~~Lace and Bram find themselves trapped in a winter storm.
Relationships: Lace Harding/Bram Kenric
Comments: 12
Kudos: 21
Collections: 2020 A Paragon of Their Kind Dragon Age Dwarf Exchange





	Shelter Me

**Author's Note:**

  * For [inquisitor_tohru](https://archiveofourown.org/users/inquisitor_tohru/gifts).



Usually the first fluffy white snowflakes of the season filled Lace with cheer. Back on the farm, her family had always celebrated the end of the season with hot cider and a fresh baked meat pie and prepared for a long winter together in their cozy home. She tried to keep the tradition up on her own, even when traveling. She’d already traded with the Avvar for some spiced drink that probably wasn’t made of apples but would definitely warm up her toes as the early winter froze the ground beneath her feet.

But she wasn’t cheered today. It was late afternoon, the sky was an ominous color, almost all the scouts were back at camp, and their scholar was missing.

There would be no hot cider tonight.

She began tossing supplies in her pack. She couldn’t trust Bram to have a single useful thing with him. Even if he _had_ brought food and water and extra mittens, he would have chucked them from his pack to throw in old rocks or buckles or pottery shards. Pretty to look at, maybe, but heavy and useless for surviving a winter storm. She asked the scouts where they’d seen him last, and she left camp as the first flakes began to stick. 

Ordinarily she appreciated when the ground froze over and her feet crunched the mud rather than squelched in it, but not today. Today cold ground meant a possibly dead scholar. Mud was a softer landing for a fall, and the cold ground would leech the life out of him if he weren’t careful. And she was kind of partial to him.

Yelling around a dig site that was occasionally infested with hostile Avvar was not her favorite way to welcome the snow, but there was nothing for it. “Bram? Professor Kenric?”

The path was a mess—slippery and crumbling and narrow at turns and Bram did _not_ look where he was going, and she should _not_ have let some other scouts bring him here. They didn’t know that when he said he was fine on his own, he was just making things up because he had no possible way of knowing that, or that if they bothered to escort him the entire way he would tell them the history of the place, including the arguments between scholars who couldn’t agree if the warrior credited with liberating this specific area was one man or a series of people who all held the same mantle, or maybe even an elf or a dwarf.

“Professor Kenric?” she continued shouting, her stomach knotting further with each unanswered call.

“Lady Harding!”

She was almost on top of him when she found him. He was sitting on the ground, and the snow had gathered on his hat, giving him camouflage.

“Didn’t you hear me calling you?”

“I can’t say I noticed at all! Take a look at this dagger hilt I found. See the markings here? This side has a crest that to me looks like the Forsythia crest of Nevarra, but on the _other_ side we see what I’m certain is the imperial seal of Orlais circa the Divine Age. The timing of the two don’t seem to go together, and what’s more, during the Divine Age, that family opposed the empire.”

“That’s all great, or confusing really, but we have to get out of here. The snow is really coming down and—”

“Oh. I’m afraid I can’t walk exactly right now. Is anyone else with you?”

“Can’t walk?”

Bram gestured to his foot. “Took quite a nasty stumble on entering the pit. My ankle is… well. You can see it.” His boot was off, as was the sock, probably because neither of them would have fit on the bloated mess of bruising that was his ankle. “I quite literally stumbled into this amazing find,” he said, brandishing the hilt. Lace would have laughed if she weren’t so busy imagining just how much that had to have _hurt_. 

“Why didn’t you call for help?”

“I didn’t want to bother anyone. I had meant to be down here for a few hours anyway. And once I found this dagger hilt, I forgot all about the pain.”

_A few hours_. He had to have been down here for six hours at least, the idiot.

“There’s no chance you’re one of those magical humans, are you?” Lace asked miserably.

“I’m afraid not.”

“Okay, well, it’s probably not broken, though it could be, but obviously you can’t put weight on it…”

Even for a human Bram was lanky. A dwarf or an elf she might have been able to carry on her back, but him? He’d just drag along the ground, not that he’d notice if she found him an old hair pin or something to look at.

“I can’t get you out of here without help,” she finally conceded. “I guess it’s good I brought a tent and some supplies… Hopefully when the snow stops someone will come for us.”

“Is it snowing?” he asked, blinking at the sky as if he weren’t covered in it, “So it is! Wonderful!”

A gust of wind blew all of the snow off of his hat. Well, at least his ankle was icing, sort of.

Lace got busy building camp around Bram. He offered to help four times, and she had to remind him that he literally couldn’t walk, definitely _shouldn’t_ walk, and maybe should put his ankle back up on top of the packs like she’d left him. Each time he chuckled and agreed that she was right, apologized and repositioned his leg, but then a minute later he was sitting up, foot on the ground, reading something in one book and scribbling furiously in another. 

Then, while she was tying the knots to get their tent set up, her fingers frozen, Bram said, “The way you do that, it’s really quite elegant.”

“Oh, I thought—” _I thought he was going to say ‘cute’._ “No one has ever called me elegant before.”

“That can’t be true. Your hands—the way they move, so deft and skilled. It’s truly wonderful to watch.”

Lace blushed furiously, which had the added benefit of warming up her fingers enough for her to finish the job on the tent without making a fool of herself after he just complimented her like that. _Elegant_. Nobody ever called people like her elegant. Then again, nobody had ever called her “Lady Harding” before. Her blush intensified.

Under the fresh snow, this strange southern forest lost its identity; it could have been anywhere. It could have been home. With the tent set up, she stretched her hands high into the air and shook off the flakes that landed on her fingertips. “’Whose woods these are I think I know,’” she murmured, “’His house is in the village though; he will not see me stopping here to watch his woods fill up with snow.’”

“Why Lady Harding!” Bram called from the ground, “You are a romantic!”

Her face would never stop being red. She thought he was still busy with his books and hilt and wouldn’t hear her. “Hardly. My mom used to recite that poem on snowy nights when I was a kid. I was just thinking these woods look like home covered in snow.”

“’My little horse must think it queer,’” he continued for her, “’to stop without a farmhouse near between the woods and frozen lake the darkest evening of the year.”

Hearing that poem with _his_ accent was certainly something new. “Tell me the rest of it,” she said as she shot markers into the trees around their camp. There was a good chance they’d be completely under snow before scouts came to find them tomorrow, so she tied Inquisition flags to arrows and embedded them in the tree trunks to mark the spot. Snow would keep them warm, but Lace hoped she wouldn’t have to dig them out. 

“’The woods are lovely, dark and deep, but I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep, and miles to go before I sleep.’ It certainly seems appropriate for our current predicament.”

“Yeah, but we won’t be going anywhere at all before we sleep. Maybe if I’d thought to bring a horse with a nice jingly collar…”

“Horses wear bridles, Lady Harding, not collars.”

“Right, well, you can see why they don’t let me around the horses much.” At least if she kept up this blushing, she wouldn’t have to worry about them freezing to death. And the way Bram laughed at her stupid comments, he’d keep himself warm enough.

With no magic, they were not going to have a fire this evening. Lace didn’t want to waste a single minute more of their body heat, so she helped Bram scoot into the tent and sealed it up behind her. She wished she’d had room to pack more blankets. Just two bedrolls to keep them off the frozen ground and her thick coat and the weird Marcher clothes he was wearing.

She rubbed her hands together and hoped the temperature wouldn’t drop too much further.

“You know, I think if you hadn’t come along, Lady Harding, I might have been in real trouble.”

Lace blinked. That was an understatement and a half. She eyed his exposed foot. “I’m glad I did come along. You don’t happen to have a blanket or a scarf or anything warm in your pack, do you?”

“I think I have an extra pair of socks? I’d be happy to share them with you.” Bram began spilling the contents of his bag—a bit of food, thankfully, his canteen—though with all the snow they wouldn’t hurt for fresh water, elfroot, pottery shards, about eight different pieces of metal, three books, various writing utensils, and a chess set.

“You brought a chess set to a dig site?”

The socks they split among them—two on Bram’s good foot, two on each of Lace’s. The food they ate slowly over the evening. The chess board they set up immediately.

Sitting in the tent for hours, Lace forgot about the height difference. With his face level with hers, she could appreciate how _handsome_ he was. At least to her. Maybe it wasn’t an obvious beauty like Cullen or Josephine, but she found the longer she spent with him the more she enjoyed looking at him. And he was too good at chess by half. She only had a chance at winning because she imposed a time limit on his turns, and he spent so much time considering them he got skipped as often as not. Even so, too many of her pieces sat next to him, and the rest felt exposed on the board as he chased her queen.

“Okay, okay, I have another poem for you,” she announced in a blatant effort to distract him from her vulnerable knight. “My dad always says this, and I think it really fits for you academic types. Ahem—” she cleared her throat dramatically, and Bram’s gaze lifted from the board to her face, already smiling— “Ready? ’Here’s a good rule of thumb; too clever is dumb.’”

Lace bit her lip while waiting for him to realize that was the entire thing. “’Too clever is dumb,’” he repeated, a hand on his chin. “That _is_ really good advice for us academic types. I’ve always told Colette that if we can’t transmit our findings to laypeople in a manner they can easily grasp, we haven’t done our job. Finding the knowledge is only the first half of it, albeit the more exciting half where nobody insults us or our parentage and credentials for disagreeing over a translation that would imply the Avvar once had extensive irrigation systems when it clearly meant simply that the landscape itself had channels running through it…” He paused, mouth still open, eyes on Lace. “Sorry, I’ve gotten away from the point at hand.”

“You get lost in tangents as easily as you get lost at dig sites.”

Bram laughed. “I deserve that. I’m sure I do.”

“I don’t mind, though,” Lace assured him, “I like hearing these things.”

“The point I think I was trying to make was… why do all this research and learn about our world unless it’s to share it with others?”

Throughout her time in the Inquisition, Lace had traveled across Thedas, seen all kinds of things, terrible, scary things sometimes, but more often beautiful, or wild, or inexplicable and awe-inspiring, and she often did all of it alone. And right now, what she wanted to do most was take Bram’s hand and show him every small secret place she had ever discovered.

He shivered. Lace eyed his naked foot, still swollen, still sockless, and definitely making him colder than was good for him. Through her coat and her bedroll, she could still feel the cold of the ground seeping through. And Bram’s coat didn’t look as thick as hers.

Shit.

“We’ll be warmer if we stack our bedrolls and share one,” she suggested, chess game completely forgotten now.

“I wouldn’t want to impose—”

“And I don’t want you to freeze to death.”

Lace had shared a bedroll before, but never with a human. He was just _bigger_ than she was used to, and for them both to fit, they had to be close. Very close. So close that at first Lace fell right off the bedroll, and she only stayed on when Bram put an arm around her and held her to him. She tentatively put her arm around him as well, and they’d be warmer like this anyway, so really, it was no big deal, but now she knew that what he smelled like and he smelled _good_. Which wouldn’t matter if they froze to death—at least her last thoughts might be pleasant—so she tucked her chin against his coat and sent out a quick prayer to Andraste to get them through the night.

She woke up with her teeth chattering. The candle had gone out. To wake up, she must have fallen asleep, so there was that at least. She was also facing the other direction now, her face exposed, which might have explained why it was _so_ cold.

“Bram?” she whispered.

“Yes,” he chattered back. She turned around awkwardly, and he pulled her close. She could feel him shivering through their coats. “I’ve been thinking. I am very lucky you came to find me today, Lady Harding.”

“Don’t count yourself lucky yet. I’m still going to have to carry you out of here somehow. We won’t make it through another night like this.”

“I have no doubt you’ll find a way. Still, there’s no one I would rather… what I mean to say is that under different circumstances… ah. Well. Your company is appreciated. And not just—I’m glad it’s _you._ ”

Lace supposed if she had to freeze to death snuggling someone in the Inquisition, she couldn’t have asked for someone she liked more. Or someone with nicer arms to wrap around her. Or someone with a more beautiful voice. “Do you know any other poems?” she asked.

Bram was slow to answer. “There’s one that’s been running through my mind this evening.”

“Can you tell me?”

“I can’t quite remember the beginning. Something about the depths of the sea, horses again. The line I keep thinking of is ‘Lodge me at your back, oh shelter me, appear to me in your mirror, suddenly, upon the solitary nocturnal pane, sprouting from the dark behind you.’”

“Oh,” Lace breathed, “That’s really beautiful.”

“It is,” he agreed.

“And we certainly are sheltering each other. In the… nocturnal plane?”

“Pane,” he corrected her, “And so we are.” Bram swallowed, shifting slightly so she had a better view of his face, warm puffs of breath on her cold skin. “It goes on. The next part—‘Flower of sweet total light, bring to my call your mouth of… kisses.’” He stumbled over the words a little, his gaze dropping to her mouth as he spoke. “’Violent from separations, resolute and delicate mouth.’”

Lace didn’t know if her mouth was resolute or delicate, but the way Bram was looking at her, she thought it must be, so she leaned forward and pressed her resolute mouth to his. He welcomed her kiss, slowly, the tip of his cold nose cold pressing against her cheek. They were already clutching each other, already so close, but the press of lips was delicate, a small spark too easily smothered in their shared winter.

That soon changed. Their bodies shifted, pressing together in new ways—better ways, in Lace’s opinion. Bram’s hands crept up her back, into her hair, but when his fingers brushed her neck, she jerked back with a squeal. “Your hands are _freezing_ ,” she gasped against his mouth.

Bram was on his back now, Lace settled on his chest above him, and his voice was deeply apologetic as he stuttered, “Sorry, I’m sorry, oh blast.”

She couldn’t help giggling, and after a moment Bram joined her, foreheads pressed together and both bodies shaking. Blowing on his fingers to warm them up for her, Bram warned her, “Careful, Lady Harding, you’ll make freezing to death an altogether too pleasant experience.”

“Good,” she responded, before slating her mouth against his again.

Lace forgot all about the cold and the snow, the Avvar and the dig site, the Inquisition and the hole in the sky. There was only Bram like a star in the dark night, the sound of the wind whipping their tent, and the warmth they created between them. Slow, cold kisses grew deep, probing, his tongue meeting hers with sweet and patient attention.

As their muscles thawed, their kiss took on an urgency. The frosty air surrendered to the bubble of heat between them. _Undressing him would be stupid_ , Lace had to remind herself, but her fingertips ached to have his skin beneath them. She satisfied herself with kissing his chin, his jaw, the lobe of his ear, and drinking in his quiet sighs, the way he moved under her, their shelter in the dark.

It could only be kissing for now, but Bram applied himself to a thorough accounting of the slopes and curves of Lace’s mouth. He was a scholar, after all, and Lace an explorer, and even if the landscape available to them was limited, not an inch would be ignored or overlooked. She giggled as he pressed a kiss to her brow, the point where her scowl was deepest according to him, and she bit back gasps as his tongue swirled just below her ear.

So deep was their concentration that distant sounds did not register to Lace at all until the top of the tent shook. She jumped. Bleak sunlight filtered dimly through their tent, a dark shadow on one side asking, “Harding? Professor? You two still alive?”

Lace scrambled off of Bram, choking down laughter as she replied, “Yes! We’re here!”

They were dug out by a pair of scouts, Bram was helped onto the back of the human, Brooker, and they made their slow way back to camp, following the scouts’ own footsteps through the snow.

“He needs a healer,” Lace babbled, “His toes could have frostbite and his ankle could be broken.” 

“Harding, if you hadn’t rushed out last night, some of us might have come with you and gotten both of you home sooner.”

Lace glanced at Bram’s back, the blush she just couldn’t quite get rid of flaring. “I wanted to beat the snow,” she mumbled.

“Uh huh. How’d that work out for you?”

The scouts snickered while Lace watched her footing. The wind had blown patches of earth free from snow, so Lace moved up to walk next to Brooker and Bram. Bram was smiling at nothing in particular, the sky, the birds, the trees, but he beamed that smile at Lace when he spotted her and reached a hand for her.

It was awkward, trying to hold hands with him while he was being carried on Brooker’s back and she was trying not to slip on icy patches, but it worked, more or less. Brooker was grinning and may have rolled his eyes once or twice, but nobody commented as they made their way into camp and straight to the healer’s tent or later that afternoon when Lace slipped into Bram’s cabin and locked the door. 

Whether they were reading poetry or otherwise engaged… That was between Lace and Bram.

**Author's Note:**

> Poems included are "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening," by Robert Frost, "Madrigal Written in Winter," by Pablo Neruda, and a little quote by Ogden Nash.


End file.
